The national chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun on Tuesday gave insight into the reasons behind the recent gale of sack of 26 chief executives of parastatals and agencies on Monday by President Muhammadu Buhari, saying they were all sabotaging the APC-led federal government.
He also alleged that acts of sabotage were taking place in the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
Oyegun made the weighty allegation in a chat with State House correspondents after leading members of the APC National Working Committee to a meeting with President Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
According to him, the APC was not particularly interested in filling the vacant positions but was concerned with the “internal sabotage” that were pervasive in the institutions.
“APC members were not concerned about the positions. We are concerned about the internal sabotage that is going on in a lot of the PDP filled positions which are critical to our national growth and development.
“It is happening in INEC, it is happening in a lot of other institutions and that is what is the concern of the party (sic). It is not necessarily taking over; we should take over and they should be people who believe in the change agenda. We have no apologies for that at all, that is it”.
When asked when the vacant positions would be filled, Mr. Odigie-Oyegun said that it was up to the president to detemine that.
On the controversy trailing the 2016 budget, he at¬tributed it to the complexities aris¬ing from Buhari’s pruning of feder¬al ministries from over 40 to over 20.
He said: “There is absolutely no confusion. This is a serious issue. I want you to please understand the complications that came from ad¬justing a structure from over 40 ministries to just over 20 ministries and the necessary adjustments of figures and movements of institu¬tions that it entails.
“It was very complicated, so it is natural that adjustments have to be made to the process and that is just what is happening”, Mr. Odigie-Oyegun explained.
Speaking on their mission at the State House, the APC chair said they came because they needed to applaud the president on some issues.
“We just came to pay our respect to our President, and praised him on things that are going on and we also raised our concerns on one or two issues and altogether we had a very pleasant and rewarding meeting”.